Emily Austen
When we complete tasks, are complimented on how successful we are, or are acknowledged for a certain behaviour, dopamine is released, which provides us with a happy feeling.
Dopamine is a feel-good release, and therefore we want more of it. Craving this pleasure hormone increases the chances that we will repeat the behaviour, and thus the cycle begins. You can get hooked on this rewarding experience. While you might consider this to be an addiction to being busy, what you are actually addicted to is the feeling you get from completing, achieving or progressing in your projects, plans and goals.
We often think about addiction in relation to drugs, smoking, alcohol or food, but addiction is about being compulsively or physiologically dependent on something habit-forming. Busyness is habit-forming.
This is not about being less ambitious – quite the opposite. It is about revising the way you spend your time and where you place your focus, and ensuring that the energy you expend is proportional to what you are getting back in return, while making busy time productive.
Choose a discipline that you have natural ability in, and a sport you are built to play. I was never going to be a prize runner. I hated running at school; I wasn’t built for it, and I feel that criticising runners in adulthood has become a central part of my personality. But just because I wasn’t going to get a medal for running, that didn’t mean I couldn’t be a phenomenal sports competitor. In fact, I dominated tennis, hockey and a bunch of other sports. With the exception of the shame I felt when I had to do PE class in my pants as punishment for forgetting my kit (can you actually believe that was a thing?!),
I have never felt any shame or guilt about not being a good runner. It’s never been an issue for me. I was too busy focusing on the things I could do where I could win. It’s highly likely, if you’re a burned-out, ambitious woman, that you feel pressure to be great at everything. The narrative is reinforced everywhere that we must be better, stronger, faster – but strangely, never smarter.
Here’s the thing; if women have had to work harder, be better and deliver more, the net result of that is that we are more capable, able and determined than anyone else. Setting yourself up to win isn’t about doing the hardest thing, or forcing yourself into a job or a dress size that makes you miserable. Setting yourself up to win is about making a realistic assessment of your natural abilities, and then leaning into those. In an abundant mindset, there is room for everyone. The very reason there is room for everyone is because we aren’t all the same. It’s the sum of our differences that brightens the picture.
Many of us tie our self-worth to what we achieve, and have been convinced by positive reinforcement delivered through films, media, celebrity and books that the goal should be to be an ‘Octopus Woman’. The main problem here is that you don’t have eight arms, babe. You have two. So, if you’re juggling enough for someone with eight, you’ll drop a few things. I work on an eight-to-two method – of every eight tasks that I deem important, only two can be urgent.